I created the projection design for the Chicago premiere of Hooded; Or Being Black for Dummies by Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm, directed by Mikael Burke. This video design featured two projectors, a live video feed, projected imagery, and a variety of text-based projections created in collaboration with graphic designer Alicia Gaines.

Marquis and Tru are both fourteen year old black boys, but they exist in two totally different worlds. Marquis is a book smart prep-schooler living in the affluent suburb of Achievement Heights; while Tru is a street savvy kid from deep within the inner city of Baltimore. Their worlds overlap one day in a holding cell. Tru decides that Marquis has lost his “blackness” and pens a how-to manual entitled “Being Black for Dummies.” He assumes the role of professor, but Marquis proves to be a reluctant pupil. They butt heads, debate, wrestle, and ultimately prove that Nietzsche and 2pac were basically saying the same thing.

The projection design was created in dialogue with Lighting Designer Eric Watkins, Scenic Designer Sotirios Livaditis, and Sound Designer Grover Holloway. Stage Manager Kayla Menz, Production Manager Cole von Glahn, Technical Director Bobby Huggins, and FFT Managing Director Amanda Fink were also all of great help in the installation, troubleshooting, and operating of this design. This production featured performances by Andrew Cutler, Jalen Gilbert, Caroline Hendricks, Jayson Lee, Casey Morris, Brian Nelson Jr., Lauren Pizzi Montgomery, and Maggie Scrantom.

I created the video and projection design for the world premiere of Refrigerator, a play by Lucas Baisch, directed by Hutch Pimentel. This production ran May 13 - June 9, 2018, produced by First Floor Theater in Chicago, IL.

Eighty-two percent of the planet's people have dispensed with their physical bodies and uploaded their consciousnesses to IceBox in hopes of reaching a digital paradise. Some of the last employees of IceBox and Co. continue to provide transitional services for clients making the ascent. Benjamin has won the lottery, and as he spends his last day in the office, his coworkers battle with their own moral and socioeconomic inability to abandon their individual visions of reality - what it is and what it should be.

The offices of IceBox are run by Opus, an intelligent program that dictates the actions of the employees: rewarding and punishing behavior with the allotment of points, assigning tasks and break times, monitoring the ascension process, and making cryptic declarations. The physical presence of Opus was created through an original video design for three vintage computer monitors embedded into the set, with unique cues live-triggered throughout the performance. The final moment of the play also featured a projection of a hand (modeled by Briana Finegan) crashing through the ceiling and into the office.

Along with director Hutch Pimentel and playwright Lucas Baisch, this design was created in dialogue with scenic designer William Boles, sound designer Thomas Dixon, and properties designer Amanda Cantlin. Opus was operated by Assistant Stage Manager Anastarr Alvarez, and projection by Stage Manager Aaryanna Gariss. Technical Director Bobby Huggins, Production Manager Caitlin McCarthy, and FFT Director of Production Cole von Glahn assisted in the installation process.

Every Tuesday in February 2018, The Grelley Duvall Show took over the Hideout, one of Chicago’s most beloved venues, with a show filled to the brim with live music, dance, sketch, ACTING, and multimedia gallivanting. Alex Grelle's trove of cine-musical infatuations create a new genre of “obsessive homage” and empowering spectacle inspired by underrated scene-stealing actors. The Grelley Duvall Show included projections, videos, and short films by Sid Branca, Molly Hewitt, Steve Labedz, Thea Rice, Eve Rydberg, and Alex Thompson.

Muvves is a Chicago-based electronic dance pop music project fronted by singer, songwriter, performer, and producer Jawshua Lambert. The current lineup features Adam Siska and Ryan Luciani, with various past performances and recordings featuring Ryan Murphy, Rich Lombardo, Ralph Darski, and Marie Hahn. Beginning in 2017, I’ve been performing with Muvves as a live VJ, creating audio-responsive animations that react to the music as it’s played, while I’m also live mixing and manipulating the images and shapes.

Loosely inspired by Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Daddy's Girl is a multimedia exploration of the possible internal experiences of the novel's two main women. The script commissioned for the festival was part play script, part screenplay, blending a live performance with video sequences to be shot and edited for the piece using the same actors, Bindu Poroori and Sasha Smith, as well as Andres Fonseca and Robert Rashid. A live improvised score was performed on the musical saw--a presence in Fitzgerald's novel--by Fonseca, FFT's Musical Director.

The Distance to the Moon (2013)

The Distance to the Moon was a performance with live video feeds made in collaboration with First Floor Theater. The script was created through the adaptation of Italo Calvino’s short story “The Distance of the Moon” from Cosmicomics, as well as his Six Memos for the Next Millennium. The video effects were programmed using Isadora. This piece was created as part of a Chicago Performance Lab residency at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago.